28mm Italians

Who doesn't love Italians?

This is a start for a Bolt Action force. It features 2 squads, a 81mm mortar, a medium machine gun and HQ.

To round out this force. I intend to get a few squads of Berseglieri, an anti-tank gun and a couple vehicles. I've always loved the Semovente 75/18 and the Carro Armato M14/41.

In the meantime, they can fight every other force I have, including the Japanese. (They had several dust-ups in China. Peking embassy, and I think a few others.) But specifically, they can face off against the Americans, Germans and Soviets. So they are really the utility force in my collection.

I'd like to get some partisans and do some fighting around Rome as well.

As purchased, this is a 500 point force for Bolt Action. 

Italian mortar and machine gun teams. I decided to go with the grey cotton uniforms. I just felt it offered more color than the monochromatic olive grey uniforms and helmets too. They wore these in Sicily, Italy and Russia. Good enough for me.

The HQ. The Capo di Capo in front, with second, runner and Observer. Unfortunately, the observer's radio was not included in the blister so I had to make one. not as hard as it seems; it is just metal sprues from other figures glued together. I'm thinking the runner could double for a medic if needs be.

Squad number one. 

Everyone, including me, likes their backpacks, so I included a shot.

Squad number two; identical except for the NCO figure. BTW, these guys are metal and the only part that needed attached was their heads which turned out to be a major pain in the ass.

For starters, for each squad of 10 there were 48 heads included which sounds ridiculous until you realize that a full 40 of them were for either North Africa (sun hats) of for Berseglieri (w/ feathers). Of the remaining 8, only 4 had helmets, the other 4 were soft caps. Well, I wanted helmets, so I had to use clippers to trim the feathers off the Berseglieri helmets. Just in case you're wondering why some of these guys have heads shaped like Milk Duds.

Oh yeah, and they are hard as fuck to glue too.

My good friend Armando. Pretty sure he has panettone in that pocket.

Bolt Action Soviets

It's been a busy spring.

Along with the Japanese, I've just finished the Soviets and a the main bulk of an Italian force for Bolt Action (or any other WW2 skirmish game.)

Actually, I started the Soviets way back before I was marooned in the corn. But, I had only done a couple test figures and they sat, and sat. Inspired by the Japanese and the chance to game Nomonhan, I set to work a few weeks ago. 

The infantry are not Warlord models. They are from the Plastic Soldier Company and there is good and bad about them. The good is that they were cheap. I think I paid $32 for a box that had 57 dudes. That's a good deal in toy soldier speak. The bad was that there were three sprues and each had the same models on them, albeit, they switched heads on some of them. There are multiples of the same figure, some with soft cap and others with helmets. The other aspect that was both good and bad was that there is not a lot of detail in the figs, so, on the one hand, they were easy as shit to paint, and on the other, not a lot of detail.

Funny that though. The PSCo makes great 15mm vehicles with tons of detail. You'd think it's be easier with 28mm? Who knows?

Buy I wanted an army that is ready to play, so I don't have a real big issue with the lack of detail. 

So, here we go...

The ubiquitous ZiS-3. Love this gun. The BA rules short change it though and only classify it as a howitzer. True, but t was in actuality also an AT *and* anti-personnel gun. When I design scenarios it will be used as such. The table will be way too small to use it as a howitzer in the first place; one of the drawbacks of the game as a rules set.

The ol' 45L. There *will* be a Bread Works scenario designed around this baby before too long.

The 82mm mortar.

The workhorse, T34/76. I pondered doing all kinds of camo patterns on this baby and then realized: being the most mass produced tank of the war, it was meant to be utilitarian and I decided to paint it that way. A lot of the finer details in this and all the models are not coming through in the photos; it really isn't as bland as it looks, there is some depth to the color.

This will double as a T34/85. I'm not paying $35 more to have a bigger gun on the model. Deal with it.

Soviet heavy metal. Despite what anyone says, I have seen two instances of footage of a guy running while holding this thing upside down on his back.

More ZiS3.

Soviet officers and NCO's and medic. Somebody is definitely THAT way. Going the wrong way will get you the gulag. Choose wisely. The medic was a construct of my own. Each sprue had a woman like this on it, which is fine, everyone knows that Soviet women fought on the front lines. But why make her looking into her purse? I got creative and made her a medic. Still have two more if anyone needs one.

Six LMG's and loaders.

A close up of the drum.

Tommy gunners! There's a total of 15 in the box.

Rifles. There were 21.

The whole kaboodle. I like these guys.

I still need to get an SU76 and would like a SU85 as well, but that's a little bit down the line.